At a mountain resort, a refined intellectual runs into his former pupil, now a beautiful woman half his age. As the nature of their rekindled relationship changes, he documents with perverse lucidity his attempt to resist falling in love with her.
Adela is a fin de siècle novel written by Garabet Ibrăileanu, one of Romania's most important literary critics. The author spent a decade refining and circulating the work among his literary friends, finally publishing it a year before his death (1933). It received the National Novel Award that same year.
A sharp analysis of male prudeness and idealism.
—George Calinescu, critic
One of the most beautiful and enduring specimens of the Romanian analytical novel.
—Eugenia Tudor-Anton, writer
A painful, full of doubts midlife crisis of an overcomplicated man. Courageous book for its time, deprecated (but nevertheless delightful) by today's standards.

—George Cocu, reviewer
A model of psychological literature imbued with genuine poetry.
—Eugen Lovinescu, critic